Enough grief and terror in our nation’s schools. Schools must be, by definition, safe places of learning. It is guns and greed and power that make people blind to the horror guns cause. Of course, it is too about mental illness, but a deranged mind cannot blow away classrooms of kids and teachers with a knife. No one needs automatic assault weapons to hunt or for protection.

If too many of our nationally elected officials cannot reinstate the national assault weapons ban because they were bought by the NRA, elected officials in every state can act. No excuse or argument makes any sense in the face of the bloody scenes we witness in schools week after week. If the current rate of gun inflicted deaths in this country were caused by disease, there would be panic and no expense spared to stop it. While our state of Massachusetts has a ban on assault weapons and some of the toughest gun laws, the lowest rate of gun related deaths in the U.S., and elected officials who care, most other states don’t, and we are sickened by what we see happening.

When will it end? It will end when parents, teachers, students, administrators, retired teachers, grandparents, law enforcement people and everyone who cares stand together and demand sensible, safe gun laws. It will end when voters vote only for those who have not sold out to the NRA. It will end when we march and speak out in Washington, D.C., at our state houses, in front of NRA offices, in front of gun stores and at gun shows, in front of munitions manufacturers businesses.

March 24, 2018 is on my calendar as a first date to do so. Let’s get out and demand a national ban on all assault weapons and bump stocks now. That is an obvious step we can take, backed by the majority of Americans, gun owners and all.

Carolyn Henderson
Newton and Vineyard Haven